by Sandy Blair
Her hands shifted to the narrow, jeweled belt at her waist. She fingered one of the smooth purple stones and sighed. She only had two choices, starve to death in her room or face her demons sans make-up but in a beautiful dress. Neither held any appeal, but her head ached and her gut burned. Resigned to the inevitable, she pinched her cheeks, licked her lips and headed for the door.
In the great hall she found a half dozen men sitting at long tables. Some nodded as they stood. When Rachael entered, Beth hurried over to her.
“Where is Duncan?” Hoping to ease the pounding in her head, she reached for an untouched loaf of dark bread on the table. She broke off a piece and found it dry and gritty. Hoping to soften it enough to swallow, she peeked into a nearby pitcher and sniffed. Ale. Yuk!
“The MacDougall ‘tis with my husband, tres honoree dame.”
“Where?”
“In yon bailey.” Rachael waved toward the east facing windows.
Beth smiled. She’d not had to repeat her words to be understood. Keep it short and sweet, Beth, and you might just survive until you can find your way out of this nightmare.
“May I have some water, please?”
“Of course, madame.” Rachael scanned the room and muttered, “Zee lazy lass. ‘Twill be brought to yer solar forthwith.”
“Thank you, but I’ll just have a glass here.”
Rachael frowned at her for a moment, shrugged, then turned away.
Beth nibbled on her bread and studied her fellow diners and the room’s decor. Most of the men, huddled in groups, and the women, shuffling past with arms full of ale tankards, were fair and blue eyed. They ranged in age but not one--save the priest-- carried any spare fat, which she found surprising, given the volume of food they were consuming. After watching several men pitch bones to the floor, she cautiously peeked under her chair and immediately raised her feet.
An enterprising student could have re-created a dinosaur from the waste in the rushes. No wonder the room smelled rank. And all this time she’d been blaming the occupants’ lack of deodorant.
The bread continued to roll like pebbles in Beth’s mouth and she looked about for Rachael. Wondering what could be keeping her, Beth noticed a beautiful familiar looking woman studying her from a shadowed corner of the hall. Beth smiled tentatively. The woman rose. As she approached, Beth realized why the woman looked so familiar. The woman’s flawless skin, chocolate doe eyes, and mahogany hair made her the spitting image of Winona Ryder. Oh, lordy, just what I need. Another naturally beautiful woman in my life.
“Bon jour, tres honoree dame.” The lovely woman curtsied. “Je m’appelle Flora Campbell.”
“Good morning.” Beth’s smile faltered. “I’m afraid I don’t speak French.”
“Nay? But ‘tis the tongue of all gentils hommes. Ye must speak.”
“No. I’m sorry.”
Her confusion evident, Miss I’m Too Lovely for My Clothes tried again. “I be Flora Campbell. I bid ye welcome.” To Beth, the woman didn’t look so much welcoming--weelcooming, as she pronounced it--as curious.
“Thank you.” Beth waved toward the empty place next to her. “Please sit.” As Flora made herself comfortable Beth assessed the lady with an expert eye. Yup, the woman’s full lips, kangaroo-long lashes, and flawless skin with its dusting of rose at the cheeks were all products of Mother Nature. Even her choice of a magenta gown was perfect. It enhanced her coloring and accentuated her perfect figure. Beth took a deep breath and swallowed her envy. Unfortunately, swallowing it couldn’t keep her from feeling like a warthog under the woman’s scrutiny.
“Ye spake oddly,” Flora told her. “Where from cometh ye?”
“America.” When her companion’s brow furrowed, Beth added, “From across the sea, far away.”
“Ah, and your dower?”
“Dower?”
“Ye hostile and lands.”
Ah, she means dowery. Why else would a handsome man like Duncan MacDougall choose someone like her, huh? “I have a castle on an isle.”
“‘Tis as grand?” Flora’s wave encompassed the room.
“Absolutely identical.”
Apparently not pleased, Flora cast a critical eye over Beth’s costume. “If thou art well-dowered, why doth ye wear the gowns of the laird’s third wife?”
Did she just say third wife? The wad of bread Beth had been chewing suddenly clotted her throat. How the hell many wives has Duncan had? She’d read about only one. Is this woman--now looking down her perfect little nose at her--implying she was number four? And where the hell is Rachael and the water? A body could die of thirst around here.
“Ye must ken ye uncle, the Duke of Albany well.”
“No...nay, I’ve never met him.” Beth missed whatever the woman said next as she continued to ruminate over Duncan’s other wives. Did they divorce during this time? She didn’t think so.
Flora tapped Beth’s arm to get her attention. “Why, then, dost Albany find ye digne to wed The MacDougall?”
Beth shrugged. “You’ll have to ask him, Flora. I haven’t a clue.”
“Clue?”
Beth didn’t get a chance to explain her American slang. Rachael, looking quite pleased, had arrived with a large pan of hot water, toweling, and a small mirror.
“Ye water and glass, madame.”
As the fourth Lady MacDougall groaned, Flora curtsied and backed away. She wove her way back through the cluttered hall and resumed her place in the far corner. She picked up her needlework and pretended to embroider as she studied Blackstone’s newest mistress through lowered lashes.
So this is the next wife Duncan the Black gets to torment. The new Lady MacDougall was certainly nothing to look at and as addled, poor thing, as rumor accounts. So how will he dispose of this one? Twill, no doubt, be the easiest to eliminate yet. For kill her he will, just as he killed her beloved sister. And if he dinna, she’d tend to it herself.
~ # ~
Duncan ran an agitated hand through his hair as he stood in the bailey and studied the shafts of papers Isaac Silverstein had compiled.
“Have we enough to finish the kirk and get through the winter?”
Isaac rolled a shoulder, “Oui, but only if ye dinna have the brass effigy made. Simply carve Mary’s name into the stone, and forego the elaborate woodwork.”
No effigy. As he buried her, he’d promised Mary she’d be memorialized in bronze. His second and third wives he’d made no such promise to, but Mary had been a good woman and deserved the honor. Too, her sister Flora and her father, the Campbell, would expect it.
He looked about the bailey, his gaze settling on the blacksmith pounding out hinges for doors he’d yet to find enough wood to make. Perhaps he’d been foolish in not taking up the Duke of Albany’s offer. ‘Twas not too late. He could don his armor and once again sell his soul and arm, becoming a mercenary fighting in Normandy for the French King against Henry IV of England. The thought of maiming and killing men he held no personal grudge against yet again he found distressing. As much as leaving Blackstone unfinished and in the hands of untried warriors, for he knew Angus and Douglas would insist on following him. But if it has to be done. . .
Damn his hapless sire.
“Halt fashing, Duncan,” Isaac murmured. ‘Tis making ye ill. We must simply be prudent. All will be well.”
“We lost half of our wee kine in that late snowstorm, Isaac. Ye ken we must now barter or buy meat if we don’t want to butcher our breeders.”
“True, but the fishing is going well, non? The women are drying flakes in salt as we speak, and the crops look promising, so we willna starve.”
“Looking promising and being harvested are not the same thing.”
“Duncan, do ye not trust me?”
He looked at his advisor, the man who not ten years ago had been sentenced by the villagers of Ballimoor to cumburenda—-burning at the stake--and sighed. “Aye, I trust ye. Ye’ve kept me afloat with ye wee trading all these years with naught but a few marks
of silver.”
“And will continue to do so. Here.” He handed Duncan an invitation bearing the King’s seal. “The tournament is to be held in honor of His Majesty’s birthday in two months time. No man can beat ye at the lists or at jousting, so yer fears are for naught, mon ami.” Isaac gave him a slap on the shoulder as he walked away.
Duncan hissed as his back muscles knotted like the tarred shrouds on a ship. Pain radiated down his spine and left arm. “Merciful mother of God, why will I not heal?”
He felt a tap on his good arm.
“We need to talk.” His wode new ladywife stood at his side with her hands on her hips.
He frowned seeing her for the first time in the harsh light of day. God’s Breath! Save for the bruising and the silver flashing from her gray eyes, she had to be the plainest female he’d ever beheld. His gaze instinctively traveled downward. A good foot taller than she, he had no difficulty looking into the gaping bodice of her gown. He seriously doubted she could nourish a babe with what little she had to offer, let alone keep a man like himself—-one with a preference for heavy-breasted women—-satisfied. The thought of breeding prompted him to ask, “How many years be ye?”
She clutched the top of her gown and frowned at him. “Twenty-four. Why?”
The answer surprised him. He’d been told she was just sixteen. Did Albany think he’d not ask, or had His Conniving Highness merely assumed she’d have a strong enough sense of self-preservation to lie? And what other lies has Albany foisted upon him?
“Duncan, we need to talk. I need to know how I came to be here, and I really need to go back. And why did you marry me? We certainly don’t know each other well enough.” She heaved an exasperated sigh as he stared at her. “I know. I probably brought this about with my foolish daydreams, but all this...” Her arms waved about. “In truth, this is nothing like I imagined. Not with men urinating off the battlements into the ocean, food being thrown to the floor, my being dressed in wife number three’s clothes---which don’t fit as you’ve already noticed--and my not being able to drink the damn water.”
What the hell was she ranting about in her odd English? Why would she want to drink water? And what gave her the impression he’d tolerate that tone of voice from her? “Wife, I dinna like ye speech nor ken yer aggravations.” Seeing the men stopping their work to stare, he grabbed her arm.
Hauling his agitated bride toward the keep, he whispered through clenched teeth, “Were ye not at meat, wife? Were ye not clothed? What do ye find so grievous?”
“Stop manhandling me!” She tried to pull from his grasp.
“Nay, not ‘til ye be calm and respond with thought.”
“Fine.” She sounded more dejected than angry as she tripped over her gown on the stairs to the solar. “I’ll answer anything you like, so long as you help me get back to where I belong.”
“Ye belong here and ye belong to me, woman.” He walked her across solar and pushed her into a chair before the cold fireplace. In the process, he felt another stitch tear in his shoulder. When the pain eased—-when he opened his eyes, he groaned seeing her expression.
“Bloody hell, woman, dinna start to greet.” He couldna abide a woman’s tears. They made him feel guilty, made something inside him want to run and hide. Or smash something.
She wiped the wetness from her cheeks and straightened. “I’m not greeting. I just want to go home; to my coffee, to my mullioned windows, to my make-up, and God help me, to my fu--screwed-up plumbing and kerosene stove.” Seeing his shock, she blanched white and fresh tears coursed down her cheeks. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to swear.” She turned her face to the window and whispered. “It’s just that I don’t understand any of this, and I’m frightened.” She took a deep shuddering breath and murmured, “So very frightened.”
He had no idea what caw fee or o seen stove meant, but he did understand her terror.
He took a seat across from her and reached for her hands. “Lass, were ye a voweress?”
She’d come to him from a French nunnery where she’d been living since her husband’s death. Since only the most pious--the religiously zealous-—did this, her cursing not only came as a shock, it underscored the level of her distress.
He wanted to strangle Albany.
His second wife, unbeknownst to him, had been a religious fanatic and look how that ended? ‘Twas sad, that this woman should also be land rich and coin poor. Otherwise, she might have had the hundred pounds sterling per year needed to keep Albany from marrying her off, and they would have both been spared.
“Tis sorry I be, lass, but ye be my bride and here ye must remain.”
“No. I could lose my home.” She wrung her hands. “I need to get back to the twenty-first century where I belong.”
He blinked. He couldna possibly have heard her correctly. If he had, she was truly brain-coddled. But no matter, she had to remain at Blackstone if he and his clan were to keep their home.
They spoke at each other rather than with each other, for what felt like hours.
Beth finally gave up.
Now, she simply wanted to hide from his furious perusal. Her eyes felt blood-shot and her nose...she didn’t want to think about. It had the nasty habit of turning scarlet from bridge to tip whenever tears threatened and they’d done more than threaten in the last half-hour. She suspected she looked like a baboon’s ass, which, no doubt, did little to enhance her credibility.
She stood and walked to the window while Duncan, an obviously unhappy man, tried to digest what she’d told him.
“Ye be wode, woman, if ye truly believe yerself a spirit.”
Great. Not only did he have no memory of her, he still didn’t understand. To make matters worse, he had called her wode frequently enough for her to understand he thought her insane. “No, Duncan, I’m not a spirit. I do know—-ken—-I’m flesh and blood.”
She twisted the ring on her hand. Was she the first wife to wear it or the fourth? Thank heaven she’d found Duncan’s diary and had spoken to him before this nightmare began. If she hadn’t, she’d likely be jumping out the window after enduring his ceaseless ranting and glaring.
“Duncan, stop.” She held up her hands in defeat. “We’re not getting anywhere. You can’t or won’t help me, and I’m too tired right now to care.” The dull throb at her temples had converted to stabbing needles of pain behind her eyes. Her teeth were even beginning to ache. “I need something to eat.”
Obviously exasperated, Duncan threw up his hands. When he resumed his thick burred grumbling and huffing at a staccato pace before the fireplace, she walked out the door.
~#~
“She then turned her back to me and walked out! On me, her laird!” Parched, Duncan reached for the tankard on the hall table and took a deep swallow of ale. “I tell ye, Angus, this woman isna long for the grave. Had I not already lost three wives, I swear I would have smote her then and there, putting us both out of our miseries.” The utter gall of the wench!
“My lord?”
He turned to find Flora at his elbow, grinning like a cat with a mouth full of feathers. “What?”
“Yer lady, sire. She’s not at Vespers. The priest is most anxious. He canna start without her and she canna be found.”
Duncan clamped down on an oath. “Start without her.”
“But--”
“Do as I say!” He waved her away. When she curtsied and slid away looking none to pleased, Duncan cursed.
Angus grinned. “Now what?”
Duncan took another swallow and came to his feet. “We find her, then haul her to the chapel, trussed if need be.”
~#~
When Beth’s capsized launch was discovered bobbing in the harbor, a hue and cry raced through Drasmoor. Women, keening, raced along the beaches and headlands in search of Beth. Men, swearing and praying, ran for their boats and grappling hooks. Tom Silverstein raced to his launch and headed for Blackstone.
The ride across the harbor felt like the longest of his lif
e though he pushed the throttle to maximum speed. With his gaze raking the boulders at Blackstone’s base for Beth, he nearly collided with Blackstone’s quay. He threw the engine into reverse. As the engine choked and the sea churned, nearly swamping the stern, he threw a line around a cast iron pole and jumped.
Yelling Beth’s name at the top of his lungs, he tore through the bailey and into the keep. Heart pounding, palms sweating, he ran up the stairs and into the solar. The room stood empty. He sniffed the still air. Something had caught fire, but what? He bellowed for her again. Silence answered.
Shaken, fearing Beth had truly drowned and been washed out to sea, he walked to the rumpled bed and spied a bit of torn leather and a wink of gold. He moved the covers and couldn’t believe his eyes. He was staring at the famed Broach of Lorne—-the only tangible proof the MacDougall clan had defeated Robert the Bruce in battle--rested among the coverlet’s folds. His heart nearly stopped. No one had seen the Bruce’s bejeweled ornament in six centuries. He’d come to believe it a legend, just as his treacherous heart had begun to suspect the coming of the one had to be. He reached out a tentative hand to pick it up and realized the bedding was wet. He brought the damask to his nose and sniffed. There was no mistaking the clammy scent. Seawater.
His heart stuttered with understanding. “She hasna drowned.” His laird had somehow rescued her. Tom fingered the broach with shaking fingers. He listened. Hearing nothing, feeling nothing but a heavy stillness in the room, he took a shuddering breath. “It has begun.”
Now, all he could do was he pray for Beth. His infant son’s future depended on it.
